Amazon Web Services (AWS) confirmed that drone strikes damaged three of its data centres in the Middle East on Sunday, March 2, 2026. Two facilities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were directly struck, while a third facility in Bahrain was impacted by a drone strike in close proximity, causing physical damage to infrastructure.
The incident occurred on Sunday morning, with the company posting to its AWS Health Dashboard that objects had hit the data centres in the UAE, causing ‘sparks and fire.’ AWS also reported that it was investigating power and connectivity issues at a site in Bahrain. In the latest update of AWS, it was confirmed that the outages were the result of drone strikes caused by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. The incident highlighted the vulnerability of key technology infrastructure, like data centres, during military conflicts.
Conflict Escalation Raises Concerns Over Prolonged Regional Instability
AWS reported that the drones have caused structural damage, disrupted power supplies to infrastructure, and, in some cases, fire suppression measures were required, which caused additional water damage. The firm recommended that customers who use their services in the region back up their data and migrate workloads to alternative AWS facilities in the rest of the world. AWS also warned that if the conflict continues, it would cause the broader operational environment in the Middle East to remain unpredictable. (AWS Health Dashboard)
According to Amazon’s update, the infrastructure issues have disrupted several AWS services, including the EC2 compute, S3 cloud storage, and the DynamoDB database offering. In the company’s latest update, Amazon said that it has made significant progress in recovering the DynamoDB and S3 control planes, which are the foundational services of AWS.
Earlier on Monday, Amazon warned customers about delivery delays in the Middle East as Iran targeted the region with missiles and drones in response to U.S.-Israeli attacks. It also added notices on the top of its marketplaces in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, alerting customers about an extended delivery time in specific areas.
AWS is also reportedly working to restore data access and service availability in the affected regions, which don’t require the facilities to be fully brought back online. While the U.S. President, Donald Trump, warned that the conflict could stretch well beyond four weeks, as he had initially estimated. While Israel said that it was simultaneously targeting Iran and Lebanon, after the Tehran-backed Hezbollah militant group attacked Tel Aviv with missiles and drones.
Concerns Rise Over Big Tech’s Regional Expansion Pace
Tech giants in the U.S. have been positioning the UAE as a regional hub for artificial intelligence computing, which is needed to power services such as ChatGPT. Furthermore, Microsoft announced in November that it plans to bring its total investment in the UAE to $15 billion by the end of 2029 and will use Nvidia chips for its data centres. The recent strike on the UAE facility marks the first time a major US tech company’s data center has been disrupted by military action. This has raised questions about Big Tech’s pace of expansion in the region.
The Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank said its platforms and mobile app were unavailable due to a region-wide IT disruption, but it has not been directly linked to the outage to the AWS incident.
